As the use of cellular phones and communications increases, organizations and other entities need to prevent or control the use of such phones. For example, many correctional facilities or sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs) such as military installations and other campuses need to prevent persons from communicating with the outside world with devices that are not sanctioned or monitored by the facility. In such scenarios the entity seeking to prevent the use of the cellular device(s) would typically need to choose one of the following approaches: 1. Jamming—preventing the device from communicating with the base station. This approach prevents legitimate devices from communicating with the base station and does not distinguish legitimate devices from non-legitimate devices. 2. Detection—detecting which device communicates with the base station. This approach fails to prevent the non-legitimate device from communicating with another device outside the facility. The facility is defined in space.
Selective connectivity of cellular phones can be achieved using a managed access system that utilizes a base station (or a plurality of base stations) that attract(s) the cellular devices in the facility as the most attractive base station in the area. Once the phone registers onto the access base station, core parameters from the phone, which uniquely identify it, are acquired and used by a management system which controls the behavior and services provided to each device, allow or provide selective service to legitimate devices and prevent service from the non-legitimate devices. The base station can deny service from the legitimate devices and send them to another base station, while keeping the non-legitimate devices at the virtual base station. Alternatively, the base station can provide services to the legitimate devices by connecting the legitimate device to the public network. Such location based policy enforcement can be provided by a third party base station or by base station of the mobile operator.
While the managed access system offers a breakthrough in terms of selective connectivity there are methods that could be used to force the device to register with a specific/commercial base station, thus bypassing the managed access system.